


Scialytic

by Sovin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Coping, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Past Brainwashing, Politics, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 14:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8330530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sovin/pseuds/Sovin
Summary: Cassandra isn’t entirely sure why it didn’t occur to any of Vox Machina to explain the Kynan situation to her. She does something about it anyway, and starts to unravel her own traumas. Outside, the world drags on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: not mine, no claims being made, etc.
> 
> Content warnings: While nothing is discussed in graphic detail, there is extensive discussion of trauma and brainwashing/psychological abuse with somewhat specific detail. Read with caution. Important to note is that all three main characters overestimate their need to "atone" in light of their own feelings of guilt and how recent their traumas are - as an adult with more distance, I feel it necessary to point out that teenagers (or a twenty-year old) who have been deliberately manipulated and brainwashed can only be held so accountable, and the bulk of the blame should lie with their abusers. Responsibility for actions is important, but, c'mon. This is not villain redemption arc territory here.
> 
> Anyway, please join me and Team Fucked Up Teenagers in minor character hell, and feel free to say hi/talk about this trauma coping shit at [ my tumblr](http://sovinly.tumblr.com).

Cassandra isn’t entirely sure why it didn’t occur to any of Vox Machina to explain the Kynan situation to her. There are multiple possible reasons, some more and less flattering than others.

For her own sake, she takes a generous interpretation and decides to attribute it to their sleep-deprived worry or the fact that they think more kindly of her these days. The fact remains that she understands, better than the rest of them, what it means to play traitor, to have one’s mind twisted, to have jaded illusions shattered.

Only after Vox Machina goes haring off again, with no more than a brief précis on what happened to her brother, brushed aside in favor of whatever spurred their rush to Draconia, does Cassandra start to grasp what happened. She is also less than impressed that her guards neglected to inform her immediately that Percival and Vax had privately, quietly set them on suicide watch.

They had never felt the need to do that for her. But then, Cassandra thinks, even when they distrusted her, Percy would have known that obligation and duty stayed her hand more forcefully than any watch would.

Still, her information is incomplete, and so in the late afternoon, sun pressing hazily through the shimmering barrier, Cassandra walks out to the training field, sweeping her gaze over the various recruits. Her eyes almost skip past Kynan at first, his worn Whitestone garb and silent posture drawing no attention at the edges of the field.

Jarett, apparently left in charge of him, starts to summon him back to work as she draws closer, but Cassandra stalls him with a raised hand.

As she draws alongside Kynan, he doesn't shift or startle, but she catches the way he tracks her from the corner of his eyes. They're far enough from the others to be out of earshot and so Cassandra leans on the low wall beside him, looking out over the fumbling recruits.

"You’re Kynan Leore." Cassandra addresses him, acutely aware of how he shifts beside her.

"Yes, my lady," Kynan says, soft and listless, then pauses, his brow furrowing slightly, hesitant and uncertain. He still doesn't turn to look at her. "Uh, your majesty? Lady de Rolo?"

Her title sticks like an arrowhead in her chest, but Cassandra has grown used to breathing past pain. "Lady Cassandra is fine."

Kynan ducks his head, accepting that and noting it away. The air around him hums with anxiety. There are dark circles under his eyes and his skin is sallow and pale. Looking at him, obscured slightly by their angles, is like looking into a distorted mirror of herself mere months back.

Ripley never fixated on Cassandra the way she did Percival, but Cassandra met her long enough to see the cruel gears of her mind and cold scalpels of her eyes. It makes her shiver and Cassandra stills herself reflexively against the rushing weight of memory and sense, the prickling feeling like Lady Briarwood's hand on her face again.

And yet, she has no idea what to say to this young man. He can't be any older than she is, and she has no words for herself either.

"Vox Machina gave very little detail of their encounter with Ripley," Cassandra says at last. "I would appreciate a fuller account, if you are willing to tell me."

Another measured silence from Kynan, and Cassandra can't fully read him yet. She thinks he's weighing her intentions and possible reactions, engaging in the incomprehensible mental calculation of trust and danger. It's possible that he is simply tired or feels like shadows clog his tongue and block his throat. She doubts he mean to deceive her, but disguise and dishonesty and danger seem to infiltrate her home at every turn and her stomach is heavy with the possibility of it.

"She had a way to listen in on them," Kynan says, and starts his subdued story.

_She_ , Cassandra notes, the way Percival avoids naming Ripley either. The way that others can so easily say "the Briarwoods," but Cassandra can't without the sharp reminder that she is divorcing herself from them when she once, decisively and agonizingly, claimed the name for her own. What did Ripley have Kynan call her? With the title of her profession, or a more familiar name that invited him close enough for her to tear out his jugular?

It's a less terrifying thing to ponder than what he tells her, the knowledge that Ripley had been able to listen to their discussions, knew about their city and the fragile protections, had haunted and hunted Percival when he just seemed to be fighting clear of her. But the enchantment has been broken and Ripley is dead, and there are two men who have not been ground to dust in her wake.

So Cassandra listens, and understands what it means that Percy’s weapons are spreading in the world, and what the power of two more vestiges on their side means. Kynan, she notices, elides the aftermath, makes himself a ghost in the story once the dagger dropped from his hand, and Cassandra understands that very well.

“You are welcome in Whitestone,” Cassandra tells Kynan, when he finally falls silent. Her family may be tied to Pelor, but Pike is building Sarenrae’s temple, and Cassandra thinks that between herself and Percy, refugees and dragon-threat, Whitestone ought to be a place of second chances. “If there is some other type of work you think would better use your time, something might be arranged.”

Kynan’s shoulders hunch, his eyes dart away from his covert study of her, ashamed or embarrassed. “Your brother told me to start showing people how to use the guns.”

With little more helpful advice than that, no doubt, with how quickly Vox Machina tore off again. Vax assigned him to Jarett’s watch, though, and Cassandra can see the fear of disobedience that haunts him. She doesn’t push, but she is so tired of fear like prison cell bars.

So she inclines her head in acknowledgement and opens another door instead. “Very well, but do tell me if you change your mind.”

Kynan nods and ducks his head.

Cassandra rises and leaves, remembering the raven-quick flutter of her fearful heartbeat, and wants _better_ than this. Percy may have forgiven Ripley, but Cassandra will wash the fear the Briarwoods and their cohort left from all of Whitestone’s streets before she counts their scores settled.

 

\--

 

Over the course of the evening and next day, she spots Kynan tagging along at Jarett’s side, but Cassandra has her own priorities in speaking with Allura and preparing for the precipice that seems to be rapidly approaching. She still isn’t surprised, awake early with the sunrise the morning following, when she finds Kynan in the dining room, looking out the window until he hears her enter.

Cassandra studies Kynan and he studies her.

There’s a set of daggers in his belt, pretty but nothing as extravagant as the vestige he’d briefly wielded. She wonders if they’re taken from him at night, or if they’ve judged the danger passed. He doesn’t look as though he’s had much more sleep, certainly, new shadows highlighting the hollows under his cheekbones.

That seems to be all the dark on him, though – he’s forfeit dark colors and cloaks, simply dressed in smudgy blues and browns. Cassandra knows perhaps better than others that those can be better for blending into Whitestone’s halls and streets.

“Kynan,” Cassandra greets him, pausing a few feet away.

Kynan lowers his eyes. “Lady Cassandra.”

“Sit down and join me,” she invites, sweeping her coattails out the way to sit. He doesn’t move immediately, but Cassandra knows too well not to take it as sullenness or stubbornness. “If you’ve already eaten, there will be tea or coffee.”

Warily, ghostlike, he takes his own seat across the table, mousy against the stately coldness of the room. His eyes trace the inlay in the varnished oak table, but his gaze keeps flicking to the door, to the servants who deliver food.

Cassandra, not particularly hungry but keenly aware that she’s unlikely enough to have a break for lunch, stacks her plate and pours herself a cup of tea.

Kynan doesn’t take any food but he does, at length, take a cup of strong tea, tipping in a generous amount of milk and sugar, surely enough to overpower the flavor of the tea. Seemingly bewildered by the saucer, he cradles the fine bone china between his hands, letting the steam wash over his face.

How strange, to think that Cassandra feels like she best understands someone so very different from herself, who comes from such a different place than she did. She is seized by the sudden impulse to doctor her tea the way he does his, to see if it brings her closer to a world that sometimes feels so very distant.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, until Cassandra says lightly, in between bites of toasted bread, “You have new daggers?”

Kynan blinks and one hand drifts down to touch one of them, as though he’d forgotten they were there, but he continues staring into the depths of his milky tea. “Oh. Yes. Vax’ildan gave them to me. He was holding onto them for a while, he said.”

“How did you meet them all?” Cassandra asks, curious, sensing a story there. Vax, she thinks a touch bitterly, can hold grudges with the best of them, though he seems to finally have warmed up to her some.  He’d never betray a sibling, but he’s never been left behind in the snow.

“I’m from Emon,” Kynan tells her, quiet and flattened as ever, as his eyes dart up to hers and away again. “I had heard so many stories about them; I wanted to join them; I wanted to be a hero.”

He snorts, though it comes out more of a huff, and there’s a brief, wry twist to his mouth. Kynan tells her about camping outside their fortress and getting knocked out. It was wisdom he didn’t have the maturity to see, he says quietly, being turned away. He tells her about his burning hope and anger, about leaving for Kymal, where he heard about the dragon attacks and Ripley found him.

“And I believed her,” Kynan says into his cup of tea, which he’s barely touched. His ash-blonde hair is near translucent in the sunlight, framing his washed out face. “So I betrayed them.”

“I would hardly call it that,” Cassandra replies mildly, with the vivid flash of Professor Anders’ knifepoint at her throat, his hand tangled around her hair like thorns.

Kynan’s shoulders jerk and he looks up at her, eyes wide with astonishment, then narrower with suspicion. His mouth is a flat line, a dagger gash across his face. “I helped kill your brother.”

“Your part of that burden is a very small thing.”

Privately, Cassandra puts the weight of the blame on Ripley and her relentless focus and, more than Kynan, Vox Machina’s reckless willingness to throw themselves into the fight. She can hardly blame them too much, but she’s seen their incaution more than once, and while she’s numbly grateful that Percival is alive again, she’s unsurprised it caught up with them at last.

Kynan is still staring at her, and Cassandra has a choice.

The truth of what happened with the Briarwoods, what they did to her, what she did for them, is a barbed tangle that sits under her ribcage. She never wants to speak of it again, angry and mortified, petrified by how much she hates herself for being swayed, how much she hates them for playing her like a puppet on strings. Betrayal is a heavy weight indeed, and she knows that most of Vox Machina doesn’t trust Kynan. Then again, they didn’t trust her, either, and Pike’s expressed no doubt.

Knowing nothing, isolated and lacking context, is what broke Cassandra at the last. If she wants the world to be different, if she wants Whitestone to be different, if she wants to claw her desperate way to something like redemption, then transparency is called for, and if anyone can understand, he’s staring at (past) her.

“I was so overcome with fear that I left them to be killed by the Briarwoods, the people who killed my family.” The words fall from Cassandra’s mouth like dead things and her muscles clench against the urge to flee. “They didn’t die, but it was a close thing.”

His mouth settles into an uneasy frown and his eyes fall back to the table.

“All the same,” he murmurs, staring at some memory she cannot see.

 

\--

 

Percival and Vox Machina tend to be terrible at keeping her in the loop, but at least they had sent Desmond with something of a letter, and Cassandra had slightly more of his story from him, incisive in observation and heartbreaking in his exhaustion.

They aren’t close, certainly, and Cassandra can hardly blame Desmond for distrusting de Rolos these days, but she helped get him settled in as best as possible, before the Chroma Conclave smothered their fragile tendrils of growth.

Cassandra seeks Desmond out in the library. She doesn’t think it’s what he intended to do once he came home, though she’s not sure he knew either, but with the dragons, with the refugees, with the decreased need for couriers, Desmond has taken to the archives.

She hesitates to say he has taken up Professor Anders’ position, for many reasons, but Desmond has at least taken over the libraries. The Briarwoods had left them in disuse and disarray, and she can admit that it’s welcome to see the rooms tidied and looked after. Cassandra had spent most of her time in her father’s library, consumed with her reading and desperation, without enough energy to stop the rest of the world from decaying around her.

When she enters, Desmond is pulling an armful of books from a shelf to catalogue them, but he smiles as he turns to set his books on the table, eyebrows lifting and posture straightening with attention.

“Lady Cassandra,” he says, soft spoken even in his surprise. He rests his left hand on the stack of books, standing a little straighter. “Can I help you?”

She barely knows him, but Cassandra and Desmond both survived the reign of the Briarwoods, grew up in the greying ruins of their home. Both lost their families to the displeasure of those who considered them mere toys, and were two of the very few living who walked the desolate halls of Castle Whitestone fearing the possibility of ruin, wracked with painful gratefulness to be protected and surviving still.

“There’s a young man who just arrived,” Cassandra begins, with the feeling of intruding into someone else’s sanctuary, however much the library may belong to her. “Kynan Leore. He met Vox Machina in inauspicious circumstances as well. Will you speak to him?”

Desmond blinks, clearly taken aback and uncertain. At his side, his right hand, permanently scarred and altered by Percival’s misdirected wrath, twitches as if to clench. He nods, then again more decisively. Cassandra thinks his project here has centered and settled him some. “Alright. I can do that.”

Cassandra thanks him and retreats to her own work, wondering if she will ever be able to stop asking such difficult things of others.

She resists the urge to follow up, but it’s comforting to walk by one of the studies later and hear, faintly, Desmond’s reluctant, musing “They were a little awful,” followed by Kynan’s quiet laughter.

 

\--

 

Cassandra is startled when Kynan seeks her out the next morning, stepping into the council chamber after the last members have trailed out. She waves the guards out of the room over their silent protests, and considers Kynan where he stands before her.

“Desmond told me more about what happened with the Briarwoods.” He looks past her, back down and away. There’s another faint furrow to his brow, and the hollows of his face are etched darker still, tired and aching grief shrouding him. He doesn’t look nearly distressed enough, still, to know even as much of the story as Desmond knows. “It’s different. You were with them for years, without a choice.”

“Old enough,” Cassandra replies, schooling her face and her hands to stillness. Every time she looks out over the city, she feels blood under her fingernails, guilt pooling in her gut. She blinks the emotions back, grateful Kynan isn’t watching her frozen face. “Aware enough to take responsibility for my own actions, too. Though, I imagine you know that mitigating circumstance does very little to reduce the guilt.”

“I know,” Kynan says quietly, his hands curling in the fabric of his pants, anxiety rising up in every line of him.

Silence sits heavy between them.

“There’s space at the dinner table, if you would like to join us in the evenings,” Cassandra says, and means the invitation.

Kynan shakes his head and steps back on silent feet. “Thank you, but I can’t.”

Cassandra, though tired of only company of those far her elder, accepts that with a nod. She wants to tell him to get some sleep, but suspects it would hardly go over well. Instead, she watches him leave, an echo of a person melting into the dark of the hallway.

She wonders why so many people are so quick to grant her more grace than she allows herself, with an ever-present storm of anger and sorrow pricking under her skin like lightning.

 

\--

 

Cassandra has never been given to nightmares, or if she has, she has grown so used to them that they feel little worse than the sorts of bad dreams conjured up by general worry. For her, they are not vivid memories or amalgamations of her various waking horrors. When those do come, when Lord Briarwood steps up behind her to place a heavy hand upon her shoulder or the ghastly remnants of childhood servants decorate the halls of Castle Whitestone as-it-now-stands, they are an unwelcome and unusual surprise that jolts her to her core.

She wishes it were a dream, but the edges of Vox Machina’s return are too vivid for that. They limp back from a dragon fight, gleeful Kima in tow, and claim that the assault on Thordak must be mounted within a matter of hours.

Plan they do and strategize they do. Cassandra is not quite sure if she is angry or relieved to be left behind here, but Whitestone needs protecting. If Vox Machina’s assault fails, then Whitestone must be the base of the next attempt.

A poisonous voice whispers that she had spearheaded a resistance before, with stakes not nearly so high, and crumpled miserably and pathetically under its weight. Cassandra, ruthless, dismisses it.

Instead, she helps as best she can and, finally, stands before Percival. She wants to throw her arms around him, to bury her face against his shoulder and beg his reassurance, but she knows that neither comfort nor promises are things he wishes to give.

Cassandra catches Percy’s hands in hers and looks up into his face. She lets her hungry eyes memorize his features, hooked and craggy but with a quiet gravitas their siblings never got to grow into. Cassandra knows she was never Percy’s favorite, and he had never been hers, but they are all one another have, now. She cannot bear to let his face smudge away in her memory, the way that their brothers have blurred to brushstrokes from her poor charred canvas.

The ache to cry pierces her, but she just draws on stern reserve, as if that could lend him any comfort where he goes. Percival is studying her, and Cassandra dares not ask what he sees reflected.

“Do your best to come back to us, Percy,” Cassandra says and does not let her voice waver. She musters a hint of a smile, and when he twitches a helpless smile back, she snatches it away for the deepest recesses of her heart. They had no chance for goodbyes last time; none of them had. Though she’s seen him off on many dangerous roads before, this feels weightier and realer.

“I’ll try,” he replies with a wry, apologetic grimace. “If we succeed, I’ll bring you back a dragon’s head for your mantle, Lord de Rolo.”

Oh, her brother. Cassandra wants desperately to tell him that she loves him. Instead, she does not rise to the bait, just scoffs slightly at his teasing, and squeezes his hands.

She thinks he squeezes back before he lets go, attention already drawn away. Her hands fall to her sides, and she is grateful that at least today, there is no snow.

 

\--

 

Ultimately, for something so monumental, it takes so little time at all. Whitestone, slightly emptier and much subdued, bristles like frost-rimed pine trees for the better part of a week, before Zahra comes back bearing news and a letter from Percy.

The dragons are dead, casualties are still being counted, and Vox Machina is much too busy at work to come back so soon, taking Pike with them, at least for now.

As the edge of the held breath fades, the world seems so mundane. There are still issues to attend, the management of crops and food stores, more permanent restructuring in response to the refugees who chose to stay in Whitestone, and the unresolved question of the ziggurat beneath the city. As one of the only people left in Tal’Dorei with any sort of acknowledged rank, she had been writing letters detailing the threat and the situation to every head of state she can recall, in case of dire catastrophe, and those now require hefty revision.

Cassandra has barely slept. She has long been accustomed to working on embers, drained and weary, and it serves her now, because she cannot sleep.

She finds herself in a study that she thinks Julius once claimed, sitting in one of the armchairs by the fire and watching the bright pricks of the stars. It is still a novelty to see the turning of the moon through the clouds, unimpeded by the arcane barrier that had kept them safe. A murmuring part of her barely dares to hope that they will be able to see the cloudless sky for the first time since the Briarwoods came, if they can survive until the proper spring.

Though Castle Whitestone is large enough, it is still not vast, and Cassandra doesn’t find it odd when Kynan looks in as he ghosts past, attention likely drawn by the fire and open door. He startles slightly to meet her eyes, starting to duck his head and turn away when she opens her hand toward the empty chair in invitation.

Changing course, he enters, hovering uncertainly before taking a seat, perched on the edge as though it might bite him. The guard in the hallway outside moves so she can meet Cassandra’s eyes through the door, but retreats when she inclines her head slightly. The silence stretches, not uncomfortably, as the interruption breaks Cassandra’s reverie enough to renew her awareness of the warmth of the fire and play of the moonlight.

Nor does Kynan seem inclined to break it, though his gaze is pulled into the subdued flames licking at their fuel. He might be less pale, or perhaps that’s the low light, and he’s lacking his daggers. She still isn’t certain if that’s by his own choice or not. Cassandra hasn’t asked the guards to stop their watch, but then, Kynan hasn’t asked them to, whether he thinks they account him a danger (she hopes Jarett has disabused him of such a notion) or he appreciates their post.

Or he thinks them his jailors, and her head hurts.

 “There’s a good deal of work going on in Emon,” she says, breaking the quiet at last when a heavy cloud drifts past the cluster of stars she had been watching. “They’re still sorting through the city. If you would rather assist in your home, I am sure we could arrange it.”

Kynan shakes his head, and she takes it as his reluctance to anger the people who left him here until he speaks, with little inflection and almost raspy. “There isn’t anything for me there.”

Cassandra sympathizes and wonders what Percy did with his missing years. “There’s plenty to be done here, if you’d like to stay in Whitestone. Your help has been appreciated.”

Truthfully, Cassandra remembers little more than perhaps a glimpse of him, ashy head bent over one of Ripley’s monstrous creations as he spoke with one of the guards, but the solid awareness of another line of defense counts well enough.

He glances at her sidelong, not quite meeting her eyes, but it’s enough to see that his face is earnest. “I want to make up for what I did. If I can.”

“I don’t mean to keep you here for that.” Years of biting her tongue keep it from coming out sharp, but Cassandra’s anger reels in her veins. The Briarwoods made her the instrument of punishment once, and she recoils at the thought of being so again, even if they make her so unwittingly. “You would be hard pressed to find anyone in Whitestone who doesn’t have some guilt on their conscience. All we can do is try to rebuild and survive.”

It sounds weak to her ears, but Kynan looks considering, slightly more engaged, she thinks, than when they spoke last.

“Desmond said something similar,” he says. “He had some insightful comments on everything. He’s… astute.”

That is as close to an acknowledgement that sending Desmond to speak to him was helpful as Cassandra is likely to get, and for all its subtlety, she appreciates it. She nods her agreement and prepares to let the conversation lapse again.

“Do you want me to keep training people with the guns tomorrow?” Kynan asks. It’s the same even monotone, but it’s the first initiative he’s made, and it startles her.

Taken aback, Cassandra considers it. The dragons are gone, but the situation is still precarious.

“For now, yes,” she replies slowly. Until she can speak with Percy about it, at the very least, but Cassandra is not sure how wise it is to keep using them. “Though perhaps not as urgently.”

Kynan nods and this time, his head stays bowed. She lets him keep his counsel, and turns her gaze back to the night.

 

\--

 

For all Percy's claims that she's been trained better in governance, Cassandra knows very little on the subject. Her family died when she was a little girl, and while Professor Anders had been her keeper and kept up some of her lessons, he and the Briarwoods are hardly the models she wants to emulate.

Cassandra knows how to plot a rebellion and she knows how to hold out under siege. The day-to-day of town politics, she hasn't quite grasped and she feels as though she's scrambling. She does have a council to spread the load, but more often than not, Cassandra finds herself trying to match their decades of experience. Some day, she fears, they will look past the illusion of her title and the grey in her hair and see a desperate and treacherous child.

At least there is no longer a war council in the ziggurat, and Cassandra does not have to walk that hallway and into that room again and again and again. Does not have to pass through the sepulcher and what had been the acid baths and where the shadow demon tried to choke out her brother's spirit. The place where she killed Delilah Briarwood and felt so incredibly empty. She no longer needs to present an impassive face, as though everything about the place didn't make her want to claw through her pin-prickling skin and breathe thin and shallow.

The weeks of suppressed panic have left her twitchy and unsettled, with a low anxiety gnawing at the pit of her stomach. While the city-wide celebration released the tension in the town, especially that of their collection of refugees, the constant pressure pushing Cassandra forward simply jumped jarringly from one form to another, like the dissonant convulsion of necrotic magic warring against divine under her skin.

She doesn’t dare to stop, and so she pushes herself onward instead. That’s what guides her feet to the library she thinks most likely to have the more obscure laws and precedents on land allocation and expansion, now that Whitestone has become suddenly more central in the rubble of Tal’Dorei’s political landscape. They’ll come up, certainly, with spring and summer coming and the sudden influx of people who can now expand beyond the artificial restrictions of the arcane barrier. The library in question is out of the way, and when she turns the corner where she thinks the books might be, she instead finds Desmond and Kynan sitting at one the small tables tucked between two long shelves. While neither appears unduly drunk, there is a bottle of whiskey perched between them.  

It makes sense that they would choose this quiet place where no one really goes, and Cassandra can't find it in herself to be so much as disapproving.

She should probably turn and retreat, pretending she has seen nothing and maintaining the illusion of her thin authority. But it has been a long and arduous few months, she is so tired, and she has no better drinking partner her own age. On a rare impulse, looking at their nonplussed faces, she finds herself asking to join them.

Desmond, taken aback and clearly on the edge of apprehensive apology, blinks, studies her, and then nods. He pours out another careful measure and uses the toe of his boot to nudge one of the chairs out from the table. One of Kynan’s hands is carefully curled around his cup, but the other is suddenly white knuckled around his forearm, the only betrayal of his surprise or fear. Has Ripley made him startle so quickly or is there more she doesn’t know?

Cassandra drops down into the proffered chair with barely remembered grace, and picks up the cup.

“Thank you,” she says, and takes a drink while Desmond ducks his head in gracious acknowledgement. It’s rougher, certainly, than anything she’s used to, and burns like betrayal. She’s not drinking it alone, which makes it that much better than anything she drinks with dinner.

The two men relax at that, and Kynan takes another sip of his own drink, glancing at her over the rim. Desmond, at least, doesn’t seem afraid of her, though she thinks he still avoids her brother, leaning back a little in his chair with a surprised, tentatively welcoming smile.

She is not used to being welcomed, and her heart stutters a little with it. Cassandra returns his smile, and if hers is a little dry, well, people are used to thinking of her as stern. A blinding grin would likely be more disconcerting. She looks at the whiskey in her glass, and lets her smile tick up at the corner.

“I have to admit, this is a much more welcome find than dry treatises,” Cassandra says, and Kynan huffs out a soft breath of amusement, his tension easing at last.

“I can find those for you. When you want,” Desmond tells her with unexpected ease. “What were you looking for?”

He looks rumpled at the edges, though, face creased with concern and a certain sleepless strain to his face.  It’s drawn lines around his eyes. He’s not as much a ghost as Kynan, who looks a little less gaunt than weeks before, but Cassandra gets the sense that this clandestine drinking party has its roots in exhausted nights and a plague of memory.

Well, then, her presence is well-precedented. She takes another sip of her whiskey before answering his question. “Restrictions and laws on land allocation.”

Surprisingly, they both grasp what that means as she says it, Desmond’s head tilting very slightly and Kynan darting her another appraising look.

“Because of Emon and Westruun,” Kynan ventures, a sliver of hesitation, still not quite comfortable with her.

Cassandra nods, and they’re both quiet for a moment, contemplating that.

“We were talking about Emon, y’know.” Desmond tilts his cup this way and that, studying his hand more than the container itself. A shiver chases its way down his back. His right shoulder tenses. “I saw a bit of it, back before everything happened. The palace, even.”

Kynan shakes his head a bit, but Desmond seems to have eased his reticence somewhat. “I never got near the Cloudtop District.”

“Everything there was bright and big,” Desmond says, with the distance of recalling a memory. “There were guards everywhere, but they were wary rather than waiting, and no one walked around with their ears up around their shoulders. I even saw the sovereign, for a few minutes.”

For a moment, it seems like he’s about to say something more, but he catches his tongue and his eyes flicker to her, while Kynan looks to her as if for confirmation.

“I’ve never been to Emon,” Cassandra says quietly, and swallows down the last of her drink. She’s never been further than the outlying area of Whitestone. She doesn’t say that.

“It was just a city,” Kynan murmurs after a moment’s pause, but he drains his cup as well, and Desmond looks thoughtful while he pours them all another round. “I don’t think anyone would recognize it now.”

Desmond just shakes his head. “Some things you recognize too well and some things not at all. Sometimes I look at someone and remember seeing their family hung from the Sun Tree for some small slight, but I hardly remember what my mother’s face look liked, back before.”

Kynan just shakes his head again. Cassandra looks at the table. She can’t remember either, but she knows what he means. She remembers waking to anxious tension and being told her she was the last de Rolo, and she remembers the caress of Delilah’s hand over her face as she shivered with exhaustion. She doesn’t remember Percival stumbling away from her as she fell in the night.

“Me neither,” Cassandra says very quietly, and knocks back her drink.

 

\--

 

Cassandra is acutely aware of the barriers that separate her from the people around her, boundaries that Percival, with his time in exile, has overcome when he has not upheld them like a shield. Cassandra is a daughter of de Rolos and Desmond the son of the de Rolo’s courier (but the Briarwoods played them both like puppets on poisonous strings); Cassandra has lived her entire life in the confines of a castle and Kynan looked at castles as impossible dreams (but they were both spun in circles and made the dizzy decision for the wrong side).

So Cassandra is so very aware that they cannot and should not trust her, and very little changes, but Desmond smiles genuinely when he sees her in the halls and Kynan’s shoulders don’t bow when they cross paths. Perhaps she is a lady, but Lady Cassandra above Lady de Rolo, and it’s a strange consolation.

After years in halls filled with undead who looked past her and captors who looked down on her, Cassandra is hyperconscious of those around her. When she pulls up the nebulous and hazy memories of childhood, she cannot recall her family’s retainers, though she knows their empty, dead faces from years of long isolation. That is not an option now, and she knows the names and faces of the people she employs, the people she must protect.

It is a weight too crushing to bear some days, and part of her wishes she could beg Percy to come back and share the heavy cornerstone of Whitestone with her, but he has his own duties and obligations, so she squares her shoulders and does it. It is, she must admit, easier to do when she knows there are people who don’t view her as an uncorrupted symbol of her family, however painful that truth and the truths they share are.

Cassandra’s hands are soaked with the blood of many good people who had no title but a good deal of nobility, and the division seems impossibly, unutterably arbitrary.

All she can do from here is work to make up for her errors and her lack, and she learns as best she can from the council, from the people whose expertise and leadership form the foundation of their community. Archibald and Keeper Yennen, whose trust can never be earned again, temper and advise her. Percy comes by from time to time, fleetingly, and her hand grazes his arm. Cassandra would think her affection glances off him if his expression didn’t soften to exasperated fondness whenever he looked at her. Vex and Vax trail in his wake sometimes, Vex to search the library for books on Whitestone’s traditions and Vax to speak with Kynan, who Cassandra keeps expecting to follow them away but who never does. Pike, too, comes along, having built something of a community here, and her encouragement drapes reassuringly over Cassandra’s shoulders. Keyleth comes for the Sun Tree, doesn’t speak much with Cassandra, and often looks like simply being here is continuing an argument with Percy, but Cassandra is well aware her own assessment there has a bite of envy. Percy doesn’t notice, just offers a thought or two before returning to Emon.

The former Empress Salda walks a cautious line when they speak, and Cassandra gets the sense that she understands more of Cassandra’s own troubled past than she says, but their quiet companionship never treads into the personal. Salda mourns her husband and empire, and she reminds Cassandra of the memory of her father’s quiet composure and countenance. Sometimes, Cassandra wonders what Salda thinks should or will be done as Emon rebuilds, if she would advocate a new ruler or a council (Cassandra wonders who such a council, still in discussion, would consider and favor). Whatever her personal beliefs are, Salda offers her own wisdom and lessons, and Cassandra accepts with willing hands and cautious heart.

Advice is well and good, but Cassandra tempers it with salt these days. She’d thought Anders would be reminder enough, let alone her own failures, but she had come to trust Speaker Asum’s thoughtful and practical advice, his plainspoken wisdom laced with the same subtlety she herself preferred. To know that it was instead their enemy is a painful blow that makes sorrow and shame and searing anger seethe in her battered breast. The betrayal she’d thought Percy offered her, his unwitting ignorance as he dashed through the snow, pales in comparison to this, and she lets it go like a curl of smoke from the barrel of a gun. Someday, Cassandra might like to meet the real Asum, but Raishan’s memory is still too close, and she can trust no one, not even herself. But oh, how she wants to not be alone, no matter the risks. Cassandra is selfish.

Perhaps Kynan will discover the way to find the measure of others, especially as close as he is to Jarett, who commands easily and earns loyalty the way some earn coin. Perhaps Desmond will be able to make this place livable again and wrest his fate away from the echoes of terror in these halls. Perhaps it is a foolish thought, but if Cassandra is nothing more than a tool and a toy, then she must hope to shape Whitestone into something better, a forge for more than weapons.

Still she sleeps poorly and startles at scrapes of sensations that send thunderstorms rampaging through her mind, but Cassandra soldiers on if that is all she can do, learns because that is what she must do, and teaches herself justice from books. And because Cassandra is only human, flawed and selfish, she tries not to protest when Desmond sorts his records at the same table or Kynan leaves off his wandering to sit with her in midnight silence.

 

\--

 

Kynan’s eyes are wild and his hands twitching, what glimpses she catches.

Her restrained companions are sporadic, to say the very least, all three of them busy with their own projects. She has the feeling that Desmond sleeps poorly, but she has never seen him wandering about. But if it gets to be past a certain hour, Cassandra simply assumes that Kynan has fallen asleep for once or else found company elsewhere in the castle.

So it startles her when he steps into the doorway of what she’s starting to think of as her study, less a ghost and more upset. He looks younger, like this.

“Tea?” Cassandra offers when Kynan finally sits in his usual chair, pressed into the corner of it like it will make him more real. After a long moment, he nods.

She makes it with slow, easy movements, because the ritual of movement soothes her and she wants herself unruffled for this. Usually she lets him make up his own tea, because it has become basic Whitestone politeness these days, in the wake of the Briarwoods and their cronies. Tonight he seems too shaken, and this is a small thing she can offer.

Cassandra pours a cup and, trying to recall the exact ratio he prefers, adds a generous amount of milk and sugar before deftly reaching over and setting it on the table beside him. She knows that Desmond flinches from even accidental touch, and while she’s unsure if Kynan shares the same aversion, she thinks he’s been given little enough choice, of late.

She refills her own cup next and, after a moment of deliberation, makes hers the same way, settling back in her chair as she waits and watches the steam curl up from the surface. From the corner of her eye, she sees Kynan’s hand snake over and pick up his cup, cradling it between his palms like something both grounding and impossibly delicate.

The hunted look fades a little and his breathing evens slightly.

Cassandra does what she has always wished someone would do for her and just waits, existing and patient.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, because she is. It’s unfair, profoundly. Ripley had scarred her brother nearly beyond repair – Cassandra cannot recall what she saw when she rescued him from the cell, but she recalls the nausea and terror and that it was terrible. Burns, she thinks, may have been involved. Kynan’s scars may be (hopefully) mostly mental, but Cassandra has little doubt they run as deep.

 “It’s nothing. I can function on three or four hours of sleep,” Kynan says and shakes his head. He pauses, continues. “I had to do that a lot, with her. I took a lot of watches. Things always seemed to go to hell late at night.”

It strikes a chord with Cassandra, and suddenly she recalls so many sleepless nights, how everything seemed to be inches away from disaster until the early hours of the morning, with the rebellion, when they took her. For months, it felt, sleep was a precious thing to hoard, and something she’d freely trade to complete her work, until she broke under the weight and spilled it. Until Delilah’s hand traced her cheek as fondly as a mother to a daughter and coaxed the rest of her secrets from her, with Sylas’ prying, charming eyes pinning her in place like a sword running her through.

“So did I,” Cassandra tells him. Was it calculated, that lack of sleep? Contrived so that thinking straight was impossible and the haziness of reality crept in just enough to bend minds? “There was always something that required my immediate action.”

“It felt like having responsibility. Like being trusted.” There’s a bitter twist to Kynan’s voice. His expression is subdued and pained as he thinks.

Cassandra sits quiet and waits for whatever more he might want to say. It had felt very much like responsibility indeed. Only, her responsibility carried lives. She drinks her tea. It is sweet and heavy, just this side of cloying, but that lends it substance. Strange, but not unwelcome.

“She made me feel so important,” Kynan finally says. “She talked like I would be part of something important and better. I overheard – she had me listen in on them, talking about how the dragons were their fault. I guess that wasn’t right, but I was so confused and angry and hurt, because I’d thought they were heroes. And she said that they would probably take the dragons down without problems, but what then? Everything was a wreck and they’d brought the dragons on Emon in the first place, so someone had to prepare for after. That I could be part of that, doing the right thing. I was so alone, no one wanted me, and she was interested and thought I had potential.”

He scoffs, a pained sound.

“I know better now.” His voice is low, little more than a whisper. “I thought she’d seen something good in me. I was too naïve to see that she had an agenda, that all she saw was a way to hurt Vox Machina and twist the knife a little deeper. I listened to her, and my ego got people killed.”

She takes a moment to think of what to say, delaying with a sip of her tea and letting its warmth fill her. Transparency, she thinks, to counter breadcrumbs of truth, designed to lead them down paths of cruel conjecture. Cassandra will speak, rather than imply. “Ripley was very good at manipulating those around her into doing what she wanted, without letting her own hand be seen. You may have hurt others, but you weren’t malicious or cruel, and you decided to turn your back on her, in the end. You want to make up for what you’ve done. You’re trying. If the world is going to keep moving forward, then that’s what has to count. If we can’t trust ourselves, then we have to rely on our actions.”

Cassandra wonders if she should tell him that’s what she tells herself, that it’s the refrain she uses to hold the panic attacks at bay as best she can. She wonders if she should tell him how far her betrayals extended, but even the thought of voicing her greatest mistakes makes bitterness rise in her throat, and that truth is still too raw to share.

But Kynan looks contemplative, if not convinced. His mouth presses in a bloodless line, but he takes a deep breath and subsides. He sips his tea.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice rough and raw.

“Of course,” she replies. “It is the least I can do.”

She does it anyway. That’s the point.

 

\--

 

People slowly start to trickle out from the city, leaving in search of family and friends or to rebuild ruined homes. Allura returns to Emon more permanently to restore her tower and town, and she lays her hand on Cassandra’s shoulder before she goes, warm even through layers of heavy fabric. Kima reluctantly goes back to Vasselheim, making Cassandra promise to summon her back any time. Zahra and Kashaw, recently returned from Emon, stop through on their way to Vasselheim as well, a whirlwind of the vague camaraderie of the sort of people who like each other well enough but don’t know one another well enough for more, but she’s sincere when she tells them Whitestone will always welcome them back.

Cassandra will miss their company. It’s a relief when Gilmore stays, and means more to her than she’ll say when he sweeps her up into a fierce hug after she tactfully broaches the subject. He grins and says he can hardly leave before sorting out the rest of the ziggurat mess, and Cassandra is grateful. Jarett and the rest of Vox Machina’s retainers stay as well, but Cassandra is well aware that as soon as Greyskull Keep is safe and restored, they’re most likely to return home. She can’t hold that against any of them, but she savors having so much company in the castle she’s so used to knowing empty.

Spring finishes melting down over the hills and the fields are a forest of growth, green spreading over the ground, stealing it back from winter and despair. It is spring in the mountains and so Whitestone is cloaked in heavy rain and lighter drizzles, but when the weather clears, the air smells of petrichor and slow blooming. When Cassandra walks through the town, she sees children playing in the muddy commons, shrieking with glee as their small feet stomp through puddles, their short oilcloth cloaks flapping behind them. It’s too much to hope that they don’t know fear, but they play despite it, and that is something worth protecting.

By the time the rains ease up, the council has mapped out a plan for finishing restoring the center of Whitestone and its expansion to accommodate a swelled population, now that they have a better idea of how many people plan to stay. Cassandra certainly understands the impulse to live somewhere other than where their families died. The possibility of increase revitalizes something, though, after five years of a stagnant and shrinking city. They even have plans for repairing and maintaining the roads. She tentatively talks with Gilmore about the possibility of reinscribing Whitestone’s transportation sigil some later day. Now still feels too fragile, too much of a risk, but it’s a possibility for a more stable future.

“Do you want to be a driver again? Or, more accurately, a courier?” she asks Desmond, and he looks thoughtful for a long moment, taking the time to consider it.

“Please don’t take offense,” he says, “but after everything, I would really rather not. I like the libraries much better.”

“Consider them yours,” Cassandra replies, and hopes he chooses to stay.

In their planning, she finally goes to speak to Kynan about the use of guns, something she’s sure has slipped Percy’s mind.

“I don’t believe we need to use them here for now,” Cassandra tells him, months of thought and balance condensed into a few quiet sentences. It hides her doubts and fears, the worries that eat at the edges of her mind cut against the steel of her resolve. “I don’t need to know how to use one, but I want you to tell me all you know about them, so I understand them.”

“Okay,” Kynan replies, and breaks them down until she understands, danger and death transformed back into wood and metal and black powder in his sure words. After, he gathers the guns to place them safe and out of the way, and Jarett leans against the wall, suddenly, as they watch him go.

“He would be a good guard captain someday,” he says, idle and easy, but approval shines in his words. He’s a good mentor, Cassandra thinks, coaxing Kynan back toward confidence.

“He would,” Cassandra agrees with a nod, the implication that Jarett could make him one and that she hopes he would apply those lessons here sitting unspoken between them. Jarett seems to hear them anyway, smile growing.

Most of her duties are along those lines, but not all. Cassandra is interested in the decoration of Castle Whitestone only as far as presenting a necessary image, no traditional lady of the house, it does begin to feel more like her space, rather than the ghosts of half a decade past. With the slowly changing weather, the heavy winter drapes can be changed out for lighter ones, dusted off for the first time in years. They’re a touch faded, due for a redying when there’s time and money to spare, but they add a welcome freshness to the halls and rooms all the same. Cassandra privately weeps to think of her mother selecting this fabric with a sharp eye, or Vesper, perhaps, given her first chance to make such a decision and giddy with the responsibility of it.

She has the windows thrown open and the rooms aired out, hiring on extra help to scrub the stone until it’s bright. One of the cooks offers cuttings from her garden, and Cassandra accepts with thanks, fragile stalks of green peppering the withered gardens that had once been the castle’s pride. Their efforts are paltry, restoration of the castle a meek prospect beside the project of the town, but it helps throw off the cloak of a long and heavy winter.

Let the world come, Cassandra thinks, recalling the weight of letters she wrote to varied heads of state, and let them see that if Tal’Dorei’s cities are meager, they have survived dragons and demons. She wonders if King Dwendel would flinch if she told him that Whitestone’s people had survived the Briarwoods.

Still, if the world is coming, it is coming slowly, and from the top of the curving road leading into the city, Cassandra fixes her eyes on the Sun Tree. Legends she knows better than her blood say that Pelor planted its seed here and her family to watch over it. What did he see here to warrant it, she wonders, nestled quiet in the pale stone mountains, precarious and obscure.

 

\--

 

Some days, it feels as though the Briarwoods will always have their hands wrapped around her throat and that Professor Anders’ treacherous knife will always dig into her throat. Those days wrack her mind with memories at every corner, trace evidence of her slow ruination pricking at her skin. Others, there is no more than the tightly lidded paranoia. She is glad to have people on the council to watch her, Keeper Yennen’s piercing eyes tracking her face, keeping her in check. She is.

Only, Cassandra feels, always, the tattoo against her ribcage, written into her bones the way well-trod mantras tend to be: “Be good, be quiet, be compliant. Never make them angry.” To give them reason to doubt her would be ruinous, and Cassandra can only imagine what would be done, if she could crack open her ribcage and the people around her could see the black rot of treachery and fear and cowardice. The Briarwoods had etched her away like the acid used to melt the white stone to residuum, and Cassandra, warped and poisoned, resides. Cassandra cannot recall a time when she was loud, and thinks that if she were, restraint might have choked her. Instead, she measures her movements as economically as marshalling her forces and trains herself to reserve. If she is impeccable, they can trust her restraint, even if they cannot trust her.

Other days are, if not better, bearable. With the Briarwoods and Anders and the new nobility and Ripley dead, with the oppressive threat of dragons gone again, the knot of tension that’s been sitting in Cassandra’s chest since the night her family died begins to ease, ever so slightly. There is room in her brain for scraps of memories that no longer have to be hidden away in her desk drawer.

It still takes her by surprise, nestled in the library with Desmond and Kynan and a bottle of wine (which she provided, this time) as the sunset cast its glowing patterns across the floor, that not every recollection of her family _hurts_.

Desmond makes a quip about learning to shave again with his left hand and terrible early adolescent scruff, which makes Kynan’s mouth tip up with rueful acknowledgement, and Cassandra finds the words slipping out of her mouth almost without thought.

“No one ever taught Julius to shave,” she says, something she’d nearly forgotten. “I was too young to really remember, but apparently he walked around at fourteen with the most horrible attempt at a mustache. Every time one of the boys started growing facial hair, the jokes made the rounds again.”

Oh, oh, Cassandra has forgotten what it’s like, to think of her siblings and not just their corpses, and even with the smudging and fading of time, the blurred and vague sense of the timbers of their voices, she can recall the pitch of their laughter. She has the faint impression of Percy’s face pointedly and meticulously scraped smooth, antithetical to the scruff he sports more often than not these days.

“It was only me and my parents,” Desmond says, shrugging, though there’s an exhausted, pained affection lining his face even to mention them. Still, he smiles absently, almost as if unaware of it. “Thankfully, my father was kind enough to keep me well groomed.”

Kynan shrugs, leans back into his chair. “I was an only child too.”

His shoulders hunch, like even giving that much away is difficult when he avoids any mentions of his life back in Emon, any discussion of his family. His father is conspicuously absent from the sentence. Desmond looks like he’s trying to think of a way to ease the faint tension, but Kynan steadies himself again, forces past the moment, even though his voice is quiet as ever.

“How many siblings did you have?”

“There were seven of us,” Cassandra tells him, and the words are soft but seem to ring loud around her. No one has asked her about her family since they died. Everyone knows, or is nowhere near close enough to presume. She’s spoken about them with Percy, but she’s not been able to _share_ them with anyone before, not even in so small a way as this. “Percival was the third eldest and I was the youngest.”

Youngest, and the most expendable. Of all of them, she should have been least to survive. But she has, and so she tries to act with the grace and graciousness that Julius and Vesper would have.

Kynan is startled enough to look at her, though his gaze drops again quickly. “That’s a lot of siblings.”

“It was,” Cassandra agrees. It doesn’t bother her that he doesn’t like to meet her eyes, she understands. It saves her from forcing herself to meet his and hold steady.

She takes a long sip of her wine, hit with the sudden sense memory of stealing sips from Whitney’s cup of mulled wine as Winter’s Crest neared, with childish distaste for the flavor but victory surging up in her for circumventing her way to something reserved for the older people. In retrospect, she’s sure that Whitney knew exactly what Cassandra was doing, clumsy attempts at being stealthy likely pitifully transparent, but graciously pretended not to see, because Whitney, too, had older siblings. Leadership is far more bitter than wine, and turns her drink to vinegar in her mouth. “I’m sure half of them would have laughed themselves sick at the thought of me managing the castle.”

It’s too much. She’s sure it’s too much. If they peer the right way, they’ll catch the fractures of her private insecurities, the self-loathing and doubt, the way she will never measure up, always running behind siblings who died, brave or innocent, while she wilted into betrayal.

“That sounds a lot like how people say siblings are,” Desmond says into the quiet. He doesn’t break the moment, just shifts it, gently, and while her chest aches, she can breathe. “Though I don’t think they have a monopoly. My mother would laugh to see me in a library, she would. They always assumed I would be a courier like my father. And yet, here I am, working away with books instead.”

His grief is worn smooth, like he’s been worrying at it in his pocket until the jagged edges have stopped cutting him quite so badly, and he can let the sadness sit in his eyes without pouring out like a snowmelt-swollen flood. And he faces a piece of that grief to offer her kindness.

She expects the conversation to move on from there, but Kynan surprises her for a second time that night.

“My father was a butcher.” This time, his voice is a ghost, and his wineglass is suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. His mouth curves in a frown, deeper still than usual. “He thought I was wasting time with weapons.”

The stoop of his shoulders says his father thought more than the time with weapons was a waste, and that Kynan agrees with him. Kynan, whose father thought he should be a butcher, but who does not know his way with meat the way Desmond knows the roads.

Cassandra’s parents were often busy, and well off enough to leave the childrearing to nurses and tutors and each other, but she had never doubted that they loved her. As the youngest, she was either overlooked or overloved, but all of them knew their parents loved them. “You were never Mother’s favorite, she told me,” had only become so often repeated, almost a joke, because none of them could ever believe it to be true. The Briarwoods, whom she had lived with for a time, had spun her in their webs, but they were not her _parents_.

She cannot fathom the loneliness of that, how those digging furrows of doubt could be widened to fissures by Ripley’s greedy fingers and twisted. Ripley could hardly have asked for better soil for her manipulation than Kynan. How could that be fair?

Cassandra clutches the faint, deep imprint of her family closer to her, and reaches out to pour them all another glass, not sure yet how to reply to the depth of vulnerability Kynan has allowed them to glimpse.

 

\--

 

The problem is not the proposed road repair. It’s a solid plan that provides work and a way for the people who have been stuck in Whitestone to begin to venture beyond its borders. The problem is that Whitestone is not the only city affected by the brief reign of the Chroma Conclave. They have it on good authority that Westruun is working to rebuild, but Kymal is swollen with refugees and has little repairing to do, lending it sudden prominence. While both cities are likely to be stretched thin for resources, if Cassandra and the council need to budget for the extra distance and expense of working with Kymal, it’s better to know as soon as possible.

While the merchants of the council know their trades well, their information is half a decade out of date. Even if Cassandra could get in touch with Vox Machina or their allies, they’re generally powerful enough that roads and supply lines are afterthoughts. Instead, she turns to one of the few people she knows thinks about distance in relation to Whitestone.

It’s not hard to find Desmond, cataloguing books on non-magical medicine in the largest library, up the stairs on the half of a second story. His dark hair, a little long and shaggy, curtains his face from her view. He’s free from grey hairs even after the stress of Tyleri and the Briarwoods, but he holds himself a little stiffly, like his shoulders won’t quite sit correctly.

“Good afternoon,” he greets her when he looks up, setting the text he’s just finished with to the side. “Did you need something?”

“Your expertise, if you’ll offer it,” Cassandra says. She takes a seat and unrolls the map they’ve been using in council discussions, smoothing it down over the table. “I’m sure you’ve heard that Westruun is rebuilding and scattered, and Emon is suffering the aftereffects of Thordak.”

Desmond nods, his thoughtful eyes suddenly sharp as he traces the path of her finger over the parchment. He props his chin on his hand, smallest finger and thumb framing his jaw.

“Before and during the Briarwoods’ occupation, Westruun was our primary source of trade, excepting the market for whitestone,” Cassandra continues, though she can already see that Desmond is starting to grasp where she’s going. “They may well continue to be, but depending on the weather and how recovery goes, we may need to rely on Kymal for a while. What can you tell me about travel times? We’ve had one trade caravan from them, as you know, but given recent circumstances, generalizing is difficult.”

Nodding agreeably at that, Desmond studies the map a moment longer before returning his attention to Cassandra. “It’s not too far from the Silvercut Crossroads, and unless the road has been badly damaged, the way is quick and steady. The problems come in past Turst Fields, I’d say. Driving- Driving down to Emon, the road was rocky and unpredictable. Once that’s been fixed, it’s only a week or so further than Westruun, with a trade caravan. Two days with a fast, light coach. It shouldn’t change much of anything at all, in either expense or distance. Although…”

Cassandra gestures for him to go on, even as she makes notes for the council session later.

“It surprised me, the first time I was down there, but there’s not much in the way of trees around Kymal,” Desmond tells her, speaking delicately, but he leans forward a little more, fingertip hovering over the Ivyheart Thicket west of Kymal. “Westruun has a few more, but they don’t log the way we do up here. And it sounds like Emon is in shambles, too. They might be open to some of our logging trade.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Cassandra says. “Thank you.”

A grin breaks over Desmond’s face. “I’m glad I could help.”

Cassandra leaves him to the books and returns to the halls, wending her way back toward the council chamber to return the map. One of the other council members had made mention of leveraging the logging trade for better deals, and Desmond had, on recollection of the landscape, come to the same conclusion.

In a kinder (perhaps) world, one without the Briarwoods, he would have been the courier his father trained him to be. Still thoughtful and insightful, she’s certain, but using that to navigate the routes of communication, not giving her advice. He would never have had the chance to know how dear the library could be to him. But then, of course, in a world without the Briarwoods, she would be in no position to take advice, would likely not know him at all. At best, if she were married to someone of wealth in Westruun or Emon, Desmond would appear peripherally in her life, a vehicle for the letters from her family.

It stings Cassandra, to think herself capable of such blindness, but she was once, and learned that by knowing the faces of her family’s staff better in undeath than in life. This possible, potential Cassandra, away from the mountains and alone, would never have seen understanding in Desmond, and that Desmond would never think to offer it, would have no need. The thought of such a world, even tinged wheat-gold by the absence of Briarwoods and their corrupting fog, turns her stomach.

Unfairness itches at her. Cassandra stumbles through a position she has no training for, and Desmond, by timing and her brother’s temper, stumbled into something that suits him well, that he nearly missed. Cassandra knows little about the twins her brother keeps company with, but she understands better, she thinks, the accents that don’t sit quite right in their mouths, though she couldn’t tell you how she knows that they weren’t born to it, the way she and Percy were.

Thoughts unfurl slowly in her mind, just out of her grasp, tumbling around with something about tea, with Desmond’s hand cupping the spine of a book, with the gaps in her memory and the obtuse letters she’d learned to burn as soon as she received them. Something sits there, waiting for her to grasp it like a standard, thawing slow like spring.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, after so long being hidden, whether in the city or in the castle, Cassandra is still unused to the thought that she is a presence in peoples’ lives beyond a distant figurehead.

It will take her by surprise when the clusters of children in the city square (there _is_ a city square again, another double-take) will perk up at the sight of her and wave to her the way they wave at her brother and his party. It still takes her by surprise when she’s consulted on some feature of the castle, like she’s been suddenly, icily plunged back into being a person rather than a shade of thwarted anger and pain. It aches to be recognized, to be looked at rather than over.

“Thank you for your kindness to us, Lady de Rolo,” says the leader of a group of refugees who have decided to return home to Westruun, bowing at the waist. “We still remember the graciousness of your welcome. Whitestone has been nothing but good to us.”

They were devastated by dragons and half-giants, Cassandra thinks, inclining her head. What else could she have done but try to make room, once they were in Whitestone? “I am glad to hear it. Safe travels to you all.”

There’s a stuttering murmur of curtseys and bows before they retreat to the caravan they’re joining, and Cassandra watches them go. Archibald, who facilitated their brief farewell, looks at her with something she can’t quite place, even as they start to walk with unspoken agreement to a quieter part of town. Kynan, more solid than hollow these days, who at Jarett’s request come down to the city with them but is currently at loose ends, trails along at a safe distance, not quite a bodyguard, not quite unsure of his welcome in the town. He’s one of Vox Machina’s strays, and that counts for a certain warmth from the townsfolk. Archibald glances at him, but when Cassandra doesn’t protest, he doesn’t either.

They talk on the way about the progress of the crops and the rebuilding of some of the more damaged properties in town, but soon enough, they reach his home. He pauses before going in, though, and meets her eyes.

“You’ve been handling the situation very graciously,” he says. “We have noticed. You’ve learned much about leading.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra murmurs, and he turns away, leaving her stricken in the street. What choice did she have, after waking up to the news she was the last of her family and her people’s only hope? She has been striving to meet their expectations since she was fourteen and still healing from the arrow wounds, under the relentless pressure of things needing to be done. Her chest seizes and her heart is stone.

Cassandra thinks she’s gotten better at keeping her face under control, but whatever expression flickers across her features, Kynan spots it as he approaches. His brown eyes go dark and concerned, and he reaches out instinctively, his hand just brushing her elbow in quiet sympathy. Almost instantly, he pulls back as if burned, eyes going wide.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” he says, low and quiet and faintly distressed.

“No, it’s fine,” Cassandra replies, just as quiet, already missing the slight warmth of a touch. It’s been so long since anyone’s touched her with the thought of kindness, as though she’s something too remote or too broken to touch. “Thank you.”

Kynan twitches a tentative smile in her direction at that, dismay fading, though he still looks a little concerned, peeking up at her. “Alright.”

She’s sure he doesn’t know how much it means, even a fleeting touch, the fact that his first instinct was to try to offer comfort. The part of her mind that sits forever wary can’t help the twinge of suspicion, but it’s such a welcome change, to have someone reach out to her for once. Cassandra de Rolo is real, and she exists in this world, and it’s a little easier to remind herself of that when there’s touch to ground her.

But then, she thinks, maybe Kynan does understand, even if he doesn’t know. He’s reluctant to offer up opinions of his own, keeps quiet and close to the shadows as if being silent will keep him safe. But the other night, he’d mentioned offhand how he prefers to hold his daggers, flipping one out of his belt to demonstrate briefly. Given how little he’ll offer out anything else, it strikes her that it’s a show of deeper trust than she might imagine, and the wash of panic and gratitude of being _trusted_ nearly overwhelms Cassandra.

It still sits nestled like a faint ember  under her sternum a few days later, when the rest of Vox Machina’s staff go back to Emon. Laina, surprisingly, is the first to approach her, smiling up at Cassandra as she thanks her, then steps a little closer.

“They didn’t want me to say anything, lest it upset you, but I really do doubt that,” Laina tells her, hushed and fond and conspiratorial. “Those boys asked me to make sure that we were taking care of you. They do care about you quite a lot.”

“Oh,” Cassandra says softly, blinking. It’s. Of course it follows that if Desmond and Kynan spend so much time in her company, they must like her well enough, but that they want to make sure she’s alright, that they might consider her the same way she considers them, is strangely shocking. It seems like the sort of things friends would do, and Cassandra has _friends_.

Laina’s face crinkles up in an even bigger smile, and she steps back. “You three take care of one another, won’t you?”

“As best we can,” Cassandra promises, unable to help her smile. “Thank you.”

Laina’s head bobs and she turns away, retreating to the rest of her group with an air of pleased satisfaction. Keyleth, there to escort them through the Sun Tree, gives Cassandra a confused look, but doesn’t seem interested enough to ask. Cassandra, quiet, walks them to the door, and stands pensive at the top of the rise, while worth spreads out below her.

 

\--

 

In the cool grey of the pre-dawn, Cassandra wakes up disoriented. She still expects, sometimes, to wake up in her small childhood room, thrown by the space around her and the light from the multiple windows. Rubbing her hand across her face, she sits up and lets the world orient itself around her.

Still, it sticks, even as she rises and cleans up and dresses for the day. She’d moved, months ago, into the main bedroom. The Briarwoods had taken it over, but it had belonged to her parents, once. She’s changed it to suit her better, but she feels, on days like today, like a little girl in an adult’s clothes. The space, meant for two people, echoes around her even though her boots make no noise on the stone floor.

There’s a dry crackle in the air, grey and heavy, as summer moves in with the promise of a thunderstorm.

The halls are empty and silent on her way through them, and Cassandra misses having a castle full of people, even when it was overwhelming or the threat of danger loomed over them all. Her schedule promises to be busy, filled with smoothing the cracks of the city, making it better and safer and kinder, something concrete to ease the afterimages of the Briarwoods. She makes her way to the dining room, long and vacant, and exchanges nods with the guard she passes.

Someone’s already opened the curtains, and though there’s not much light, the faint grey dawn slants through the windows, and it’s calm, though she can already hear the low, distant roll of thunder out in the Alabaster Sierras. Food is already set out, and Cassandra helps herself to a cup of tea to start, nerves still drawn taught with the nebulous wrongness of the morning.

As she’s working up the stomach to eat something, she hears the sudden murmur of Kynan greeting the nearest guard. They’re no longer wary of him, rather fond, and Cassandra hears the guard’s reply a moment before Kynan enters. He has Desmond in tow this morning, both of them looking tired but not wrecked.

“Good morning, Cassandra,” Desmond greets, hair tousled like he’s dragged his fingers through it to push it back from his face.

“Desmond, good morning.” Cassandra’s certain she sounds rough and perhaps ragged, but it earns her a beaming smile all the same, and his shoulders relax as he pulls out a chair to sit.

Kynan smiles at her too, if faintly, and they exchange nods as he draws up his own seat in comfortable routine, reaching to pour himself a cup of tea before silently offering to pour Desmond a cup as well. It spurs Cassandra to fill her plate with whatever looks the most appetizing, handing a piece of nut-studded bread over to Desmond when she catches him eyeing the platter.

They seem to recognize her subdued mood, because they stay quieter as well. Desmond asks Kynan about working with Jarett on swordplay, and Kynan’s murmured reply creates a steady stream of something for Cassandra to focus on, slowly drawing herself back to the world of the living as she eats.

Her home may be filled with ghosts, but it is also filled with moments like these, the stilted new routines and still moments that let her find her feet again. There are people who understand the weight on her chest, and if Cassandra has days where all she can do is breathe, then at least she can understand when they have those days as well.

Outside, the thunder rumbles closer and the air begins to smell of storm.

Cassandra breathes and sips her tea, and lets the steam of it curl warm across her face as she listens.

 

\--


End file.
